


all moments meant to pass

by badgerterritory



Category: Sense8 (TV)
Genre: Gen, and this more than anything is a story very much For Trans People, mentions of transphobia and nomi being angry, read the notes before you go on if you're trans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-31
Updated: 2015-07-31
Packaged: 2018-04-12 06:55:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4469546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badgerterritory/pseuds/badgerterritory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>nomi and amanita's rough start.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all moments meant to pass

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by a line from the show - "There was a time in my life when the idea of me falling in love with someone like you, honestly, even I would have said it was impossible"
> 
> i mean, okay, look. amanita is a cis woman. there's no way there wasn't some transmisogyny at some point.
> 
> there's a part early on where nomi talks about amanita finding her masturbating and reacting badly, and the whole story is about others interacting with nomi as she deals with transphobia, so be careful please.
> 
> not very good at writing ~drama~ but whatever. i felt like this needed to exist, and now it does.

Nomi was incredibly drunk. She was so drunk, in fact, that a few of them were tipsy just off the connection. They were all worried about her, but it was Wolfgang who drew the proverbial short straw. He visited her, and found her in an unfamiliar place. She had her Kindle out, but wasn’t reading from it. Instead, she was writing the same thing, _Anaander Mianaai_ , with varying amounts of vowels, on a small piece of paper.

He stood awkwardly behind her. He knew Nomi knew he was there, but she wasn’t acknowledging him, which made everything even more awkward.

Finally he asked, “What are you… doing there?”

“I don’t know,” she grumbled, dropping her pen in favor of picking up the bottle. “I’ve been reading this book. It seemed funny when I started.”

Wolfgang sat next to her. “Where are we?”

“We’re…” Nomi squinted, then fished her glasses out of her bag and put them on. “I don’t know,” she said. “Somewhere to get drunk with nobody bothering me. Or walk up on me talking to myself.”

Whatever was bothering her, Wolfgang could clearly read the signs that she didn’t want to talk. He could taste the whiskey on her tongue as she drank again, and he could feel the adamant desire not to talk about it. So instead, he said, “What’s this book you’re reading?”

“It’s sci-fi,” Nomi said. “I don’t know if you’d like it. There’s not a lot of action in it. Right now it’s mostly politics and stuff.”

Wolfgang shrugged lightly. “Maybe I’m a man of hidden depths. Why don’t I find you and then I can read some?”

Nomi rolled her eyes at the obviousness of it, but still looked around until they determined she was in some kind of women’s locker room. She met Wolfgang outside and he threw her over one shoulder, ignoring her protest and laughter, mainly because he had to focus on staying upright as a wave of drunkenness hit him via Nomi.

They got back to his room without incident, where Wolfgang set Nomi down. Will was his roommate, and he was out with his sports team. (Neither Wolfgang nor Nomi knew, exactly, what sport Will played. Nomi because she was super drunk, and Wolfgang because he’d never really paid any attention.) Wolfgang took the bottle from Nomi and took a few drinks for himself before finally saying, “We should talk about what’s wrong.”

“So this is why you wanted me alone,” she said flatly, then smiled a little at her own joke. Because, of course, they were never really alone. Nomi lost a little of that smile when she saw Wolfgang’s unsmiling face, and sighed, wrapping her arms around herself. Wolfgang automatically sat her down on his bed and sat down next to her, wrapping his arms around her. It was familiar/unfamiliar, the comforting move not originating from him but still feeling right.

Nomi took a deep breath and said, “I’m usually very careful. I try to be. But Amanita had a class, and I was… horny…”

It didn’t take much to put the pieces together based on that. “She saw you naked.”

Nomi let out her breath. “Enough. And she didn’t react well. Which I expected. Reactions from cis people are almost never good.”

At the other end of the hall, Sun was sitting straight up, clearly listening in while trying to pretend not to be. When she noticed the two of them noticing her she asked, “Does one of us need to talk to her?”

Nomi smiled, just barely. “No. I’m a big girl, I can handle my own battles. But thanks.”

Her pseudo-sobriety didn’t last long. When she started yawning, Wolfgang insisted she lay down in his bed. Once she was asleep and snoring lightly, he grabbed her Kindle and checked out the book she was reading, making sure to save her place before going back to the start. (He liked it, even if there were things he didn’t quite understand. But he could ask her once she woke up, since she was far more familiar with science fiction.)

*             *             *

The second time Nomi got wasted, it took a while for anyone to notice. Lito was celebrating his third anniversary with Hernando by getting absolutely wasted on tequila, to the amusement of everyone else. By the time someone noticed, Riley was the only one in her room, and so she ran to Nomi’s.

Amanita answered when Riley started pounding on the door, a sheet wrapped around herself. “What?” she said, seeming extremely annoyed. A body in the bed behind her pretty much confirmed to Riley what had happened.

Still. “I’m worried about Nomi,” Riley said. “She’s drunk and we don’t know where she is.”

There was a battle of emotions in Amanita’s face. Concern with something else. Revulsion? “Nomi’s not my problem,” an obviously still conflicted Amanita said. “Bye.” She shut the door. A few moments later, the noises began again.

Riley visited Nomi, coaxing a location out of her. She knew Nomi wanted to be alone, but Nomi knew Riley wanted her to be safe more than anything. Nomi was nursing her bottle of whiskey and her quiet misery in a closet, and Riley just raised her eyebrow when she arrived. “I know,” Nomi grumbled. “Shut up. I know.”

Riley sat in the closet with her, silently accepting the whiskey for a sip. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Nomi shrugged a little. “I don’t know. I thought I was over it, and then…” She made a vague gesture with her hands, some of the alcohol sloshing out of the bottle. Nomi glared at the stain on her pants. “There’s so much bullshit. I just want it to stop. Just for one day, I want to be me, really me, gay and trans and a woman, and I want there to be absolutely no bullshit.” She took another sullen drink. Riley gently grabbed the bottle from her hands, and Nomi didn’t put up a fight. “I’m turning into an alcoholic,” she said wryly. “I’m pretty sure there’s a relevant statistic for that, but I can’t remember it.”

“You’re surprisingly coherent,” Riley murmured. She was completely useless if she had enough drinks in her.

Nomi just shrugged again. “Luck of the drunk draw, I guess.” Eventually, she got up. “Sun’s inviting us to be drunk in her room. Kala’s there to provide more wholesome entertainment.”

Riley walked with Nomi to her room, thinking about what she said.

*             *             *

Riley called it Operation: Girls’ Night In. Will offered to make them a mission scrapbook, probably as a joke. Kala still thought it was sweet and funny.

The mission was simple. They were going to ambush Nomi outside of her last class of the day, drag her to Riley’s room, and have a night for just the four girls. They were going to watch Star Wars, which was Nomi’s favorite film series, and talk about silly things, and eat genuine Korean food. Sun insisted on that last part, which as far as Kala understood meant Sun was going to get Riley to pay for her favorite restaurant.

The kidnapping phase went off perfectly. Nomi, bewildered but accepting, followed them back to Riley’s room, and was promptly seated firmly between Sun and Riley. Kala sat on Riley’s other side, all of them relaxing on the floor. Riley started the first movie.

As soon as Nomi realized what was happening, she insisted on putting a different movie in, going on and on about the proper order to watch them. She kept half-explaining things and cutting herself off because of spoilers. Kala thought it was very cute, seeing Nomi flustered in a way she usually wasn’t.

Nomi settled down as soon as the movie started playing, nestling herself securely between the two women. She didn’t move until the takeout arrived, and she resumed her cuddling as soon as Riley came back.

They watched two movies, which Kala didn’t fully understand. She disliked the violence of the movies, but she did like how relaxed Nomi was, and how energetic she got explaining things. They ended their movie night with a promise to watch the rest of the movies, and Nomi was smiling. “Thank you,” she said, hugging all three of them. “This was just what I needed.”

*             *             *

When she got back to her room, Amanita was sitting on her bed. It was the first time Nomi had seen her since her last drinking binge. It immediately brought up bad memories. “I’m going to be moving out,” Nomi blurted. “Into a different building. There’s a trans woman who needs a roommate.”

“Oh,” Amanita said. Suddenly looking unhappy. “Why?”

“You do remember what you said to me, right? Not once, but twice?”

It was obviously a shot straight to the heart. Amanita looked on the verge of tears, and it only made Nomi angry. “I’m not transphobic,” Amanita said.

“Oh, yeah, that’s why you were real uncomfortable slinging around those slurs. I could see how much you hated it.”

“I was just surprised,” Amanita insisted.

Nomi bristled. “You do not get to use that with me.” Usually, confrontations never got so far with Nomi. She’d back off, too afraid of repercussion. But she had Wolfgang and Sun at her back, lending her their quiet fury, and even if Capheus didn’t fully approve, he was there as well to support her. “Do you know how often that gets used against trans women? You were _surprised_ so naturally you’re not to blame for anything you said, and I have no right being mad!”

Before she was even aware she was moving, Nomi was at the door. She slammed it on her way out, and went straight to Lito’s room. He was one of the few that wouldn’t insist on talking about it. In fact, he already had his contraband out, ready for her selection.

Naturally, she was betrayed after two shots of tequila. “You think she deserves a chance,” he said. It wasn’t a question, nor was it really a statement. Nomi shrugged a little. Lito shifted until he was sitting cross-legged. “Hernando’s doing this thing with me, see. He’s helping me to…” Lito gestured vaguely until he finally said, “He’s helping me to express my feelings… better.” He took a shot. “So I’m going to tell you what I feel. I feel that you feel betrayed by Amanita. She said incredibly hurtful things, with no better reason than her own ignorance. But you also have feelings for her, which confuse you. So I think…” Lito paused to take another shot and started again. “So I think you should talk to her. Let her apologize. Let her know what she’s done wrong, and how she can fix it, if at all.”

Nomi considered this. Then, “How much of that was Hernando?”

“Only some of it!” Lito said defensively. Nomi nodded sarcastically, and Lito shrugged. “Okay. Almost all of it. But that doesn’t make it less true.”

Nomi huffed and hugged her legs. “This is why I don’t date cis people,” she grumbled.

Lito didn’t say anything to that. He really couldn’t. Nomi knew how hard it was to find a partner who respected not just her, but the basic fact of her identity. Lito could draw on that, but he didn’t really know the way she did.

So instead he said, “Earlier today Hernando and I were having sex, and I suppose Wolfgang was as well, because he appeared suddenly. And I was with him and the man he was with. And then Will got dragged into it somehow.”

“Oh my god,” Nomi said.

“That was the general agreement.” Lito grinned at her. “I’ve never had such good sex in my life.”

“Oh my _god_ ,” Nomi said, laughing.

She fell asleep leaning against Lito, something her body complained about in the morning. When she got back to her own room, Amanita was reading on her bed, but she stopped when she saw Nomi coming in. “I’m sorry,” was the first thing out of her mouth, followed by, “I was awful to you. I talked to your friend, Riley. She was very emphatic about all of the ways I was awful.”

Nomi would have to have a word with Riley later. For the time being, she had to deal with an apologetic cis person.

“Look,” Nomi said, cutting Amanita off. “I can be really sensitive about these things, and it was all magnified by how I feel about you. What you said to me was horrible. But I’m willing to forgive you if you, like, learn and grow. I know some things online you can take a look at.”

Amanita nodded a little. Then she said, “I’ve never known… someone like you. It’s not an excuse, but I was surprised, and I reacted by saying awful things. I wish I could say I wasn’t thinking, but…”

But you don’t say those kinds of things without thinking.

“I’m sorry,” Amanita said again.

“Stop apologizing or I’m not going to take you to coffee.”

“I’m…” Amanita stopped, then smiled a little. “Okay.”


End file.
